Exit polls give edge to BJP in tight Delhi race

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is gaining in strength in the Delhi assembly elections and might be headed for a victory after 27 years by ending the stranglehold of the Aam Aadmi Party over the national capital, a clutch of exit polls predicted on Wednesday.

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The exit polls came after a weeks-long bruising campaign and a day of acrimonious polling that saw turnouts nearly best 2020 figures in large swathes of the city. The votes will be counted on Saturday.

To be sure, exit polls are not always accurate and have often the verdic wrong in earlier elections, especially when diverse populations, castes and communities are at play. These elections are also a litmus test for pollsters and their methodology since a majority of them got the predictions for the Lok Sabha polls as well as a string of assembly polls, including Haryana, wrong. Many pollsters adopted a low-key approach in putting out their data on Wednesday, with some prominent outfits not releasing numbers and a bunch of littleknown entities entering the fray.

Still, most of the polls were unanimous in terms of the larger direction of the outcome-they forecast that the BJP would improve dramatically on its 2020 showing and there would be big erosion in the AAP's voter base.

In the 2020 assembly elections, the AAP won 62 seats and a vote share of 53.5%, the BJP won eight seats and 38.5% votes, and the Congress zero seats and 5% of the votes.

All but two exit polls predicted that the BJP will either clinch an outright majority in the assembly of 70 seats or come tantalisingly close to it.

All but three exit polls suggested that the party, which last won the assembly elections in the Capital in 1993, will make a convincing comeback and trounce the AAP in many of the latter's strongholds.